Best Buy takes minority stake in Mydeo for video sharing
Mike Butcher
10 comments »
While every online video site wrestles with trying to make social video pay, a small UK-based startup has stuck to its belief that not everyone wants to share the videos of their family and kids with the whole world. Thus, Mydeo has been rewarded today with an undisclosed minority equity investment by retailer Best Buy, which will use Mydeo’s platform for its bespoke video sharing service, reports TechCrunchUK. Best Buy Video Sharing is a subscription-based service for users to upload their personal videos for storage, but also allows them to share select videos on web sites and blogs, while controlling who views the video.
Word on the street is that Best Buy - which already had photo-sharing through Kodak - didn’t want a combined photo/video service and, incredibly enough, couldn’t find a US-based company that could do what they wanted. However, I have a hunch that since Mydeo is built on Microsoft’s Movie Maker software there may have been some useful introductions made at Microsoft level. Best Buy, the largest electronics retailer in the US, sells around a third of all video cameras sold each year. Significantly, a large percentage of those are sold to Mydeo’s target audiences of families and small businesses, who tend to use Movie Maker. Hey, it may not be cool, but it’s a fact.
Whatever the details of the deal, it’s a good one for Mydeo’s co-founders Cary Marsh and Iain Millar, who started out in 2005 from a small South West London office with local municipal grants.
I like Best Buy’s Corporate Development strategy as of late. They made some interesting acquisitions and now looking to make equity investments. Clearly their strategy is to have an annuity revenue model tied into the in-store purchases - whether digital cameras or telephony hardware.
How long before Circuit City jumps on board OR is it to late?
BestBuy is already leading the competition big time. Circuit city better get on board soon.
What, can’t find a company in the US to provide this, are you kidding me? I can think of 4 that do this exact service for brand companies. Reality Digital is by far the leader in providing this type of service.
Great win for the little guy. It is pretty amazing they went off shore for this, especially given the crap state of the USD.
Although not a new idea (not many of those anyhow)… nice to see BestBuy spreading it’s risks around and seeing more then retailing in its future.
Jon
This was NOT a Best Buy! lol
ttp://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
Wee, another small video sharing site getting attention from the corporate big boys!
Well, Circuit City has money. They can do shit like this all day long.
The video slideshows feature seems good, look cool site.
For one there a number of different companies that allow you to upload video / pictures in any format and allow you to control who see it. Second they are right here in the US and third they are free to users, check out Veeker as an example.
This was a bad move for Best Buy.